It's a tough question in a difficult economy - what do you do if you hate your job, but are afraid to quit, and your boss is too dumb to fire you?

You could complain constantly to anyone who will listen, or take out your frustration on the family guppy, or you could do something positive and life-affirming. Like stealing a stapler.

Or a box of rubber bands, or a No. 2 pencil, or a ream of paper, or a light fixture. You could even come in one day with a pair of industrial shears and cut out around the perimeter of your cube, netting you a nice patch of industrial carpeting that would look just lovely in your man cave.

If you think that stealing office supplies is an unusual way to pay back your boss for your many grievances, think again. According to the recent "Workplace Snapshot" survey on office supplies theft from the nosey-parkers at Spherion, nearly one in five of your co-workers report to having taken office supplies for personal use in the last year. And if one in five admits it, you have to believe the real percentage of culprits is much higher - say five out of five?

Of course, many of us who take office supplies are not involved in premeditated crimes. How often have you been forced to work long and late to protect the posterior of some dim-witted supervisor? The office has emptied out, and the air conditioning is turned off, and after hours of drudgery, who could blame you if you absent-mindedly stuff a half-dozen laptops in the trunk of your car?

Sad to say, many instances of office theft are as well planned as the bank caper in "The Italian Job." According to John Heins, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Spherion, employees are not just striking out in an entrepreneurial mode. They are striking back.

"It's important to consider employees' intentions regarding the personal use of office supplies. With one in five workers putting in 'excessive' time on the job according to the U.N. International Labor Office, it is certainly possible that employees simply don't regard the personal use of office supplies as stealing, but rather a matter of convenience or a small reward for their hard work."

In other words, if our bosses gave us half the perks they lavish on themselves, we wouldn't have to take our annual bonus in paper clips.

If you are beginning to suspect that your fellow employees do not know the difference between right and wrong, rest assured that the Spherion survey shows that 74 percent of workers feel it is wrong to steal office supplies. Still, only 22 percent of those who did manage to conquer their ethical convictions feel guilty. Perhaps, when compared to the behavior they see from our elected representatives and our anointed managers, pocketing a gross of ink-jet cartridges drops from mortal to venial on the sin scale.

The primary reason workers gave the survey team for having taken office supplies for their personal use was that "they needed them" (42 percent). Funny, most bank robbers say the same thing.

One-third say that they stole because their boss or the office manager said it was OK. I don't know where these people are working, but I want a job at one of those companies. The office managers I have suffered under invariably get extremely agitated when you take advantage of your employer's generosity by breathing too much company air.

This leaves 18 percent of workers who say they take office supplies because "the company will never miss them." I hope this isn't true. Call me a cockeyed optimist, but I like to believe that at least one pampered chief executive officer is tossing and turning on his feather bed, unable to sleep because he suspects that somewhere in his far-flung empire, a lowly peon is pocketing a package of Post-It notes.

Most of the petty theft is petty indeed. Sixty-six percent of office supplies taken are pens, pencils and rulers. Only 8 percent risk doing hard time with high-priced items like laptops, PDAs and cell phones - an increase of 3 percent from last year's survey.

Our managers may call this crime, but I say it's loyalty. We want our home to be an exact duplicate of our workplace, even if we have to risk a business trip to San Quentin to make it happen. Prison life may be awful, but it certainly can't be worse than life in the office.

Bob Goldman has been an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company in the San Francisco Bay Area. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@funnybusiness.com.

© Copley News Service

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